The amnesiacs

a histpry of Brazil's democratic desnaturation

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on two typically Brazilian amnesias - the first attached to a skeptical posture towards the possibility of any social progress, and the second to an unreasonable belief in an almost idyllic past.  By intertwining them with the vulgarization of the constitutional text, we seek to understand the way in which the spectrum of the first amnesiacs favors the behavior of the second, as well as the way in which both are related to the concrete appearance of the risk of constitutional-democratic denaturation. To this end, this paper observes how the leap from disbelief in the normative effectiveness to political indifference takes place, a terrain that "history fakers" – mystifiers of the past and comploticians – will take advantage of, and also scrutinizes the tricks used by the second amnesiacs to put their desires into practice. At the end of this paper, we see that, although permanent, the Brazilian crisis gains new features when the dispute for power reaches the digital field, a space that amplifies fanaticism, unrealistic rhetoric and polarization. If we intend to understand Brazilian democracy in its current stage, we think it is necessary to analyze the mentalities that favored it; hence the desire to investigate the power of the amnesic voices in the Brazilian political scene. It is in this sense that the metaphor of amnesiacs’ ship, which inaugurates the present. Entering it, we verify that it is from silence, from inertia, that democracy is denatured.